Fuller was interested and made contributions on a wide range of issues
in the area academics call the ``social sciences''. Much of this work
addressed economics. He published several studies of industrial trends.
There was the famous 1940 issue of Fortune magazine which he inspired.
In the 1960s the
Design Science Decade Documents were published.
Fuller advocated the principle of ``ephemeralization'' or doing ``more
with less.'' Fuller founded the world game which explores the task of
making the world work for 100% of humanity. His major publications
in this area are Critical Path and Grunch of Giants wherein
he also gives a unique perspective of the history of humans on Earth.

The ``Design Science Revolution'' references Fuller's program of
applying the principles of science to solving the problems of humanity
in an aggressive, anticipatory and comprehensive manner. The principle of
ephemeralization shows we can accomplish more and more functionality
with less and less energy, material and time investment, ``we are
now able to do so much with so little that we can provide for the
basic needs of 100% of humanity without disadvantaging anyone.''
In contradistinction his ``archenemy,'' Obnoxico Inc., which trys to make
money out of thin air (or rocks) with little or no appreciable benefit
to humankind. Fuller suggests that by taking the design principles
of Universe (as described in Synergetics and elsewhere) and our
consciously developed values, we can emerge from the present-day ``dark
ages'' and prosper like never before in history.

When will the Design Science Revolution begin?

[From Chris Fearnley]
The Design Science Revolution has already begun

During the 1980s, under the smoke screen of republican conservatism
conveniently provided by the mass media, large numbers of individuals
and groups have begun to organize the resources available to them to
understand the world and begin the process of working for 100% of
humanity. Here are some events that suggest that Earth may be entering
the design science revolution as predicted by Buckminster Fuller: World
Game grew to be an Institute, World Resources Institute was formed (c.
1982), The World Watch Institute began publishing a yearly State of the
World Report, home computing explodes in numbers and quality and became
ubiquitous, BBSing becomes an institution for intercommunication,

[From Unknown]

Some of my colleagues have been doing realtime strategizing where
NEWIDEA=``global design science revolution.'' Fuller's hypothesis was
that lag times in social acceptance of new artifacts is a function of a
natural gestation rate associated with different technological arenas
e.g. novelty electronics proceed from drawing boards to end-users in a
matter of years, whereas adoption of fundamental changes in household
architecture is measured in decades. Obviously changes occur along
different scales (geologic thru atomic). Some NEWIDEAs come with
glacial-paced agendas that no amount of cleverness in strategy will
accelerate beyond a top limit.

In Grunch of Giants, Bucky Fuller cast the community of networkers in
the role of David versus the supranational corporate Goliath. As in any
good tale, the archetypal opposition (compression) provides a foreground
plot against a contextual background of eternal principles (tension).
Behind the scenes we ever rediscover what teachers call ``the unity of
opposites.'' David and Goliath are two aspects of the same psyche. We
have met the enemy and the enemy is us.

The Internet is abuzz with rumors of huge conglomerates positioning for
an all-out invasion. The funky, free and informal usefulness of a
shared, non-hierarchical, decentralized, self-monitoring culture will be
conquered by a culture of greed and aggressiveness. The world of
commercial television, which has already invaded public schools, will
storm into our peaceable kingdom to haul us as slaves in chains before
our new corporate masters. We shall once again be cast as consumers of
dumbed down infotainment carefully purged any content that might offend
the sponsors. Everything will cost, nothing will be reusable or
recopyable, and stories of these carefree days will be as legends in the
ears of our children. The evil Grunch will have won.

In Bucky's tale, the now omnipresent computer is on the side of Good.
The global financial number cruncher keeps crunching away and crunching
away and always comes up with the same surprising answer: we humans
now, today, have the requisite physical and metaphysical assets in
inventory to stage a great world play about the coming of age of our
species. Late night religious broadcasting of the hopeless poverty in
our world, ever in need of our guilt-derived dollars, might be
supplanted by a new kind of program about actually ending death by
starvation -- forever. Props in our new world dramas: domes hanging
from helicopters; graphical dymaxion map displays; computer monitors
aglow with designs for livingry, ready for distribution on a massive
scale, instead of killingry, (already massively distributed).

What Bucky hoped is that our youthful, globally networked generation, so
full of promise, would stand up to the onrushing Goliath. He encouraged
us to look at lawyer-capitalism's (LAWCAP's) shareholder enterprises as
ghost ships on automatic pilot, the great pirates who once steered them
having long ago passed from the scene. Crews of bewildered and
superstitious bureaucrats still go through the motions, reciting their
mindless mantras passed on as wisdom. But LAWCAP's big picture
accounts, steeped in Dark Ages obfuscation and contrived to sound
paternal and profound, are becoming less and less a source of comfort in
these uncharted waters. The crew members are beginning to awaken to the
reality of their situation. They cling to our nets for survival.

Bucky knew the limited liability, legally irresponsible, soulless
creatures of LAWCAP's accounting hadn't the humanity nor intelligence to
navigate successfully in cyberspace. LAWCAP reflexes are all out of
synch with what world game positions now need filling. The you-or-me
never-enough-for-both great global tragedy is swiftly losing market
share. Hollywood-style media extravaganzas, now in storyboard phase,
need a new kind of star. Newscasters and media pundits with no
knowledge of designer dwellings built for multimedia, no grasp of grand
strategy maps minus their political overlays, no sense of what it means
to surf freely through the Net, have a lot of homework ahead of them.

Our time is now. We, the global networkers, the world game players of
today, have inherited the experimental prototype community of tomorrow.
A giant BuckyBall stands at the center of Disney's EPCOT, Grunch's
central shrine. The logo-language of corporate heraldry is destined to
transform in the context of this world around web, a hypertext tapestry
into which all of our metaphysical assets will be interwoven. Employing
the know-how wealth amassed for us by our brilliant and courageous
forbearers, we will make of this earth what the great pirates of old
never dared wish for, except maybe in their most private prayers: a
world in which our highest human values are consistent with the roles we
are destined to play -- a great tragedy no longer. Let the show
begin!

What about increased unemployment from DSR and automation innovations?

[Ross Keatinge's question and my reply]

> I recently read an article in an Australian Electronics
> magazine where the author is discussing unemployment,
> redundancies etc and the general topic of technology doing the
> work previously done by people.
>
> Like the author of this article, I am very much in favour of
> using technology to do more with less but am struggling to
> come up with an answer to the question of just what DOES
> happen to the factory worker replaced by a robot or the office
> clerk replaced by a computer?

I think it depends upon what you think the purpose of employment is. I
think the goal of a job is to eliminate that job. Therefore, from
my perspective unemployment is a virtue and the economy had
better learn to appreciate and value it. We need to solve this
problem quickly because in the current economy Fuller's
profesy of ``more with less'' is being conducted with a vengeance: even
highly skilled people are finding their jobs and departments eliminated
at very high frequencies.

But what is the individual to do in an economy that obeys Fuller's laws
of empheralization, but does not (at this point) support the
``victims''
of the modern economy. I think this is where another Fuller principle
comes in: What is the purpose of humans in Universe? ``To gather
information and to solve problems.'' So it would behoove the individual
to aggressively take up the task of becoming a general problem-solver
(say during your next period of unemployment <grin>). Already it is
clear the the economy does not really sport skills or experience; it
seems that only can-do problem-solving is rewarded. OK, but what
happens when our problem-solver finishes their job? Well, they go onto
solve even more difficult problems. I think Fuller called this utopia.
(Though the displaced factory worker or office clerk may disagree. It
is sad but the Universe seems to work the way it works and it does not
seem to support certain jobs or skills.)

[From Kirby Urner]

I think the missing puzzle piece vis-a-vis automation and unemployment
in Fuller's thinking is in Education Automation.

The goal is not to render humans useless but to free them to perform
metaphysical tasks with their minds. Setting up an economics to
give people ``tenure'' in a more metaphysically driven economy does
not seem all that far-fetched, given the information superhighway and
all that rot.

Digital media are inherently copiable without limit, giving everyone
access to tremendous cultural riches. But making it expensive by making
it scarce is still the only way we can figure to ``earn a living.'' So
the FBI will continue warning us not to copy videos etc. But, in
principle, we have what it takes, metaphysical resource wise, to raise
living standards in a Global University context.

...

What Bucky may have been saying, to the chagrin of LAWCAP [LAWyer
CAPitalism], is that a system which does not hold basic living
necessities hostage pending proof of your usefulness to society, but
rather supplies a workstation to all and lets each individual seek
excellence (or not), will come out ahead in the innovation and
creativity department. There are lots of ways to meter a digital
product's usefulness to others, and even to reward its authors
accordingly, but without forcing us into earning a living
behaviors. So many digital properties are vitally useful, but simply do
not fit into the ``earning a living from revenues on sales'' framework.
In fact, its the infinite copiability of digital media that makes
``earning a living from revenues on sales'' a system that gets us
actively militating to inhibit technology, with handicapped CD copiers,
dongles, other anti-copying schemes. We've made photo-duplicating an
item (leaving it for others to also use and duplicate) a crime called
``Piracy.'' Imagine a pirate ship coming alongside, snapping polaroids
of your treasure chest, and dashing off, cackling. Such is piracy.
(Again, I'm not personally into using a lot of pirated software, but
I've seen whole countries sustaining their economies on same, without
the foreign exchange to ``make it all legal'' and question a LAWCAP new
world order (i.e. the GATT) that would permanently make metaphysical
assets artificially, suffocatingly unaquirable in an economy desperate
for such assets).

[Typed in by Pat Salsbury.]
The following is an excerpt from Critical Path by R. Buckminster
(``Bucky'') Fuller. (Copyright 1981, St. Martin's Press, NY -- pp. 262-263)

``...We have pointed out that the geologist Francois de Chardenedes wrote
for me a scenario of the technology of nature's producing petroleum
which disclosed that the amount of energy employed by nature as heat and
pressure for the amount of time required to produce each gallon of
petroleum, if paid for at the rate at which the public utilities now
charge retail customers for electricity, must cost over a million
dollars a gallon. Combine that information with the discovery that
approximately 60 percent of the employed in U.S. America are working at
tasks that are not producing any life support. Jobs of
inspectors-of-inspectors; jobs with insurance companies that induce
people to bet that their house is going to be destroyed by fire while
the insurance company bets that it isn't. All these are negative
preoccupations...jobs with the underwriting of insurance underwriters by
other insurance underwriters -- people checking up on one another in all
the different departments of the Treasury, the Internal Revenue, FBI,
CIA, and in counterespionage. About 60 percent of all human activity in
America is not producing any physical life protection, life support, or
development accommodation, which physical life support alone constitutes
real wealth.

``The majority of Americans reach their jobs by automobile, probably
averaging four gallons a day -- thereby, each is spending four million
real cosmic-physical-Universe dollars a day without producing any
physical Universe life-support wealth accredited in the energy-time --
metabolic -- accounting system eternally governing regenerative
Universe. Humans are designed to learn how to survive only through
trial-and-error-won knowledge. Long-known errors are, however, no longer
cosmically tolerated. The 350 trillion cosmic dollars a day wasted by
the 60 percent of no-wealth-producing human job-holders in the U.S.A.,
together with the $19 quadrillion a day wasted by the
no-wealth-producing human job-holders in all other automobiles-to-work
countries, also can no longer be cosmically tolerated.

``Today we have computers that enable us to answer some very big
questions if all the relevant data is fed into the computer and all the
questions are properly asked. As for instance, ``Which would cost society
the least: to carry on as at present, trying politically to create more
no-wealth-producing jobs, or paying everybody handsome fellowships to
stay at home and save all those million-dollar-each gallons of
petroleum?'' Stated evermore succinctly, the big question will be: ``Which
costs more -- paying all present job-holders a billionaire's lifelong
$400,000-a-day fellowship to stay at home, or having them each spend
$4 million a day to commute to work?'' Every computer will declare it to
be much less expensive to pay people not to go to work. The same
computers will also quickly reveal that there is no way in which each
and every human could each day spend $400,000 staying at the most
expensive hotels and doing equally expensive things; they could rarely
spend 4000 of the 1980-deflated dollars a day, which is only 1 percent
of a billionaire's daily income.''

[From Ross Keatinge]

The most fundamental message I have got from his writings is about
wealth. I cringe when I hear or read about a `worldwide recession' and
a `depressed economy'. I know it sounds like common sense but I find it
difficult to get people to realize that it is all our own doing. I work
for a company which among other things does foreign exchange dealing.
I'm not directly involved in but I always find it amusing when they talk
about `The Market' as if it is some alien entity which we have no
control over. There has been some currency crises in recent times and I
hear phases like ``Everybody is watching the market very closely today,''
or ``I hope the dollar doesn't drop any further today.''

I tend to see the population of the Earth as similar to a group of
people living on an island with plenty of natural resources but some are
starving because the people can't get their act together even though
they have the technology to transport resources around the island. The
latest `Time' has a bit about the huge stockpiles of food in Europe they
don't quite know what to do with (posted 1 Oct 1993).

[From Kirby Urner]

Bucky defined wealth as life support. Some feel wealth is what humans
get credit for because it is produced through their work. This is also
the Marxist view: that only labor creates value. Given Bucky's
definition, we see the sun and ecosystems as wealth-producing, but
outside the cash system. Most of our life support (wealth) is not owing
to human labor, but to automated, cybernetic, natural processes.
Agriculture is hard work, but it wouldn't happen at all without nature's
contribution. Given Fuller's ``cosmic accounting'' (looking at wealth
production with or without human components), it appears that no matter
how hard we work, we individually get more life support than we produce.
We do not ``pay our own way'' as a species.

There's no way that you, born a helpless baby just decades ago, could
possibly pay your debts to humanity for all the assets you use in life,
including the words you use free of charge. Humans don't pay the sun
for powering the earth or take much credit for all the automatic wealth
creation that goes on around us constantly, cashlessly. Humans get to
work, yes, but they don't get to take credit for everything they
produce. Ultimately we're distributing wealth to children (average
global age: 15) and generations yet unborn -- no way they can pay their
own way.

I think the institution called The Library is fundamental to democracy
and wonder what will happen to this institution in the digital age.
What does it mean to ``borrow'' a digital asset when making a copy also
leaves it on the shelf? Trying to make information assets fit the mold
of real estate assets when talking about ``intellectual property'' is to
seriously mix metaphors. Information assets are not English country
estates.

Human language is more like an ecosystem asset than a capitalist one:
we work with it without paying for the privilege. But language is not
just a pile of words in the dictionary. Language is sense, knowledge, a
way of ordering experience. The question is: how quickly will certain
intellectual assets cross the line from cash-accounted assets to
ecosystemic ones -- how quickly will our metaphysical work be subsumed
within Language? How will language masters be rewarded, if not with
cash revenue from end users? Encryption and computerization offer the
possibility of trafficking in zillions of currencies. You will gain
access to assets you have demonstrated your ability to expertly use.
Same as now.

Fuller's point in Critical Path was that even many of those
gainfully employed (not counting disemployed-through-automation) are
doing nothing very vital to the creation of sustainable life support
systems. Market pricing is just the tip of the iceberg of a system of
pushes and pulls. At the far end of the cheap jeans is the barrel of a
gun, pointed at people who cannot prove legal tenure to the land their
ancestors farmed for generations. The prices we pay have a lot of brute
force behind them, not just self-interested parties freely making
choices. Making cash scarce to keep it valuable, by making those who
have it fear the miserable state of those who do not, is a coercive
system, not a freedom-loving one.

Cold cash is just one of many ``currencies'' -- the most liquidly
convertible (provided it is one of the globally acceptable ``hard'' ones).
I'm a big fan of wiring workstations to systems which dispense credits
redeemable ``in kind.'' E.g. hours spent completing multimedia session on
Insects of the World gets you tickets to the science museum and a
$40
credit at a book store. The museum and bookstore are also receiving
lots of non-cash redeemables for their services. Not barter exactly,
but not pure liquid either. Computers make it practical to electronify
wealth distribution games that accomplish the movement of goods in
services in more channeled, designed structures. Not big brother
though, since no central planning authority -- just lots of dial-in
``games'' with costs and rewards, likely to attract those with a
self-interest in playing. Those are the details. From a distance, it
looks like a planet full of professors on tenure, working hard, doing
more metaphysical stuff than before.

[Karl Vogel replies]

No one has deliberately set out to ``make'' cash scarce. Earth does
NOT give us everything we need without requiring any productive work
on our part; if we want food, we have to grow it or get it from
someone who has grown it. This can be done in one of two ways;
peacefully through trade or otherwise.

[Kevin Sahr replies]

I think these two viewpoints define the crux of the debate. And I (and I
think Bucky) would have to agree more with Kirby. Capitalism is based on
scarcity, and those with a deeply vested interest in the status quo (or
a simple fear of change, which I think we all share to some extent),
will fight any efforts to, say, develop cheap renewable sources of
energy which threaten the scarcity and thus the value of their sources
of income. In the long run, we each individually and as a society
suffer from this. I've heard the argument that the mechanics of a
free-market economy will eventually overcome such inertia, but I find
the idea that we live in anything even close to a free-market economy to
be absurd.

I find Bucky's vision of a society of scientist/artists who are
self-fulfilled in the very act of creation/learning to be inspiring. The
problem, of course, is how we get from here to there. I do not claim to
have the answer. However, I think that the dawning of the information
age is going to make it very difficult for people to, at the very least,
delude themselves into thinking that we do not live in an economy of
enforced scarcity. Because information, by it's very nature, only has
value in a capitalist economy to the extent that it is deliberately
``made'' scarce. If I have an HDTV with a digital recorder capable of
perfect reproduction of ``Jurassic Park,'' and a fiber optic link direct
to a digital copy of that movie, then someone is going to have to
introduce a deliberate ``mechanism of scarcity'' to keep me from copying
it. If I have a computer on my desktop capable of creating, from a
hardware/software standpoint, the dinosaur sequences from ``Jurassic
Park,'' then the only thing of real value in JP is Steven Spielberg's
creativity (and that of the other artists that participated in it's
making). Once Spielberg (or anyone else) no longer needs Hollywood's
money to make a movie like JP, and no longer needs their distribution
channels (because everyone has equal access to the net -- unless we
CHOOSE to make access ``scarce'') then what is to stop him from just
making his movies out of the sheer pleasure of it and giving copies
freely to anyone who wants them? As we move closer and closer to an
``information standard'' of value in our economy, I think the old
economic models we've been using are in for a crisis. I, for one, hope
it will be a fatal crisis.

If everyone gives freely of themselves without expecting anything in
return, we will all have more than we could ever possibly dream. And
because this makes so much sense, that must be where the universe is
headed. To me that's really what Bucky was all about. What a beautiful
being!

[From Leo Elliott]

What has become really important (economically) is not the product
(movie, book, code, net, etc.) of the artist (scientist, Spielberg, et
al.), but rather the ``enforced scarcity'' youse have recently been
batting around? What drives the GRUNCH economy is not the production of
goods and services, as standard economic theory might have it, but
rather the perpetual maintenance of scarcities, such that once an item
becomes abundant and low-cost, then production shifts to the new style,
the movie sequel, the next year's model, etc.

What has come about is the denigration, to the point of debility, of
what Bucky may have called the ability to maintain secrets, industrial,
military, or otherwise (recall his tales of how civilization was
advanced on the high seas with one nation getting the jump on another,
as via the development of guns with longer ranges, by always keeping
secret their more-with-lessing capabilities -- now these
more-with-lessing capabilities seem to be developing, mutating (dare I
say evolving) faster than the old Giants' abilities to keep up with
them, witness Aldrich Ames.)

Some may reference this to the Summer '93 issue of Whole Earth
Review, wherein Stewart Brand prefaced Kevin Kelly's article on
``Cyberspace, E-Money, and the Technologies of Disconnection'' (pp. 40-59)
as follows:

``This one is a world-changer. Personal encryption may be as
revolutionary as personal computers in transforming the web of human
communications...

``Since I am allied with cypherpunks and their program, I feel cheerfully
duty-bound to raise a question or two, such as: `If the real world is
awkward to work with and full of cops, and if electronic cyberspace is
easy to work with and has no effective cops (thanks to universal
encryption) AND is where all the money is, what does that suggest about
the future of crime?' ''

Thus in some odd extension of value-added marxian economics, the
old-model consumer of mainline value-added products (folks who might pay
the full ticket price to go see Jurassic Park in a bigscreen theater)
becomes ever less significant in the economic factoring to those who
would add value by passing lesser imitations around (videos or
associated dino mdse)... which I think leads somewhere back
towards Bucky's ``ephemeralization'' of economic processes. The ``value
added'' manifest on the nets would simply be represented by the
``passing on'' of data, in the hope/probability that it will assume
``added value'' as info and/or entertainment on the receiving end.

[From Mark Stowe]

It is my strong personal recommendation that everyone unfamiliar with
the game theory/evolutionary modeling of altruistic behavior, would do
well to read up in this area (an adequate if less than inspired starting
point would be the article on page 76 of the March 1994, Scientific
American). Capitalism is currently a necessary evil in my view because
of the presence of ``defectors:'' those whose power grows at the expense
of those who volunteer their labor. Essentially my hope for the future
lies with my belief that on-line communities provide unprecedented
possibilities for getting around this problem, because 1) they provide
enormous power to organize boycotts and otherwise isolate defectors and
2) they increase the power of the altruists by virtue of the fact that
altruistic creations in an on-line community (helpful programs,
enjoyable works of art) last much longer (the normal rules of entropy do
not apply). I think that the problem of cheaters in an on-line
community as discussed in the article on page 90 of the same Sci-Am
issue can be overcome by a number of technological tricks.

``To make the World work / for 100% of Humanity / In the shortest
possible time / Through spontaneous cooperation / Without ecological
offense / Or the disadvantage of anyone.''

Buckminster Fuller initiated the World Game in 1969 as one means of
accomplishing this worthy goal. The idea is that with enough data on
world resources and their distribution (including accumulated technology
and problem-solving skills), the world's citizens will do what's best
for all. Fuller assumed that once it was obvious that there was enough
of everything to go around, people would stop fighting wars and get to
work making the world work -- if not as a utopia at least not continuing
the current suicidal path. World Game is still developing. Recent
sessions use an enormous basketball-court-size map in order to more
easily visualize various strategies as they are suggested by
participants. A formidable software database called Global Data Manager
allows individuals to play with the numbers on their PCs.

What is the World Game Institute?

[Dane Winberg of the World Game Institute sent me this contribution.]

World Game Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan, global education and
research organization dedicated to developing and disseminating
problem solving and educational tools. World Game was conceived by
world renowned architect, philosopher and visionary, R. Buckminster
Fuller as a creative problem solving tool whose goal is to ``make the
world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time,
through spontaneous cooperation and without ecological offense or the
disadvantage of anyone.''

Global Recall 2.0 -

A computer atlas featuring 300 world, regional and
country maps and 600 data indicators for all countries; 18 essays on
current global problems; a Solutions Lab section where you can
describe your ideas for global solutions and compare them to
real-world data. Comprised of several linked HyperCard stacks,
available for Macintosh computers. Regular data updates.

Global Data Manager -

Available for DOS or Macintosh (currently only for
system 6), GDM displays data on population, food, energy, education,
natural resources, economics, etc. for the world, all continents and
all countries. Separately sold disks of data from World Bank, World
Resources Institute, UN.

World Game Workshops -

Interactive global simulations conducted for
elementary and high schools, community groups, universities and
corporations; adapted with an emphasis on world geography, history,
current events, global issues, patterns of development, strategic
options and sustainable solutions to local and global problems.

World View Map for the Playground -

A basketball court-sized world map
is painted on elementary school playgrounds; includes an activities
manual for several subject areas.

Chuck was for many years in charge of putting on World Game workshops
from the Philadelphia office.

[Posted by Ian Wells]
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD GAME INSTITUTE

The World Game Institute is a non-profit research and education
organization dedicated to developing technological and interactive tools
for global problem solving. Among our many products and programs are:

Computer software products for researchers, primary and
secondary schools, policy makers and others who need global information
at their fingertips to help them create problem solving strategies that
work.

Participatory workshops conducted for corporations, national
governments, universities high schools and world organizations that
demonstrate in real terms the distribution of resources around the
world, and methods of using those resources to provide a quality
standard of life for all humans without destroying the planet.

Museum exhibits which display the status of resource
distribution around the world, and which demonstrate the impact
of environmental, military and agricultural policy.

Publications which disseminate research methods and solutions
for global problems, and demonstrating creative uses for the
tools developed by the World Game Institute.

Playground maps of the world, supplied with teacher's training
manuals and activities to make global education fun.

The World Game was created by R. Buckminster Fuller, the eminent
geometer, architect and thinker, as a creative alternative to war
games. Participants in World Game workshops learn to see the
world in terms of one population sharing the wealth of one
planet, and ``win'' the Game when they meet the basic health,
education, welfare and survival needs of the world's population.
In its more sophisticated versions, the World Game also acts as a
simulation and laboratory, used by policy makers, corporations
and diplomats and world leaders to devise efficient problem
solving strategies.

&ast;&ast;&ast;The preceding was uploaded to CompuServe several months ago.
The World Game Workshop, while conceived by Fuller, does not
resemble the original Workshops closely at all. Neither is the
World Game Institute actively involved in disseminating information
about Fuller or pursuing his ``synergetics'' theory, per se. His
theories are a jumping off point for the Institute, but we are
not solely involved in propagating his teachings alone.

Susan Caskey

What are the World Game Institutes ``games'' like?

Did you know that some scientists have determined that the air could
cleanse itself of all pollutants in TWO WEEKS if polluting stopped for
that period of time?

Did you know that all nuclear warheads would be non-explosive in 18-22
years if no tritium was replaced in them?

Briefly, The World Game is a three hour experience including a 1 1/2
hour trading simulation game played on a dymaxion projection of the
Earth. Lots of slides and music is used to make it entertaining as well
as educational. Fuller's intent was to design a game that would be an
alternative to war games.

Although the game content deals with many issues besides the environment
such as hunger, nuclear proliferation, and education, the ideas of
cooperation and coordination are pervasive and based on up-to-the-moment
data on all of the issues.

Costs are dependent on number of workshops to be held, distance traveled,
etc. Figure around $3500 and up. But it is worth it!
Often our district
will spend anywhere from $5000- $10,000 for a speaker for
an evening seminar. So don't flinch at the money yet.

Janet Whitaker
Rio Salado Community College
Phoenix, Arizona

What is Global Data Manager (GDM)?

To quote from the GDM manual:
``If information is power, Global Data Manager is a powerful tool. Its
intended purpose is to make accessible the vast amounts of statistical
data upon which all fundamental resource allocation decisions in the
world are made... Global Data Manager makes available for the first
time, in an easy to use personal data computer format, the vital
statistics of the world. Its purpose is to integrate into one system the
world's most complete inventory of global data into an easy to use,
personal computer based, problem analysis and solving system that is
accessible to the researcher, policy maker, social activist, student,
teacher, media and general public''

Ian Wells
Director, Social Impact Group
Boston Computer Society

Does the World Game offer any solutions to the World Hunger Problem?

I just latched onto a copy of Ho-Ping: Food for Everyone, by
Medard Gabel [ED: Medard Gabel is the executive director of the World
Game Institute.] It is INCREDIBLE! It addresses the World's Food
supply/distribution problems from a holistic, comprehensive, design
science approach. That is, by considering the ENTIRE planet, and
100% of humanity in all its study. --- Patrick Salsbury

The following is a quote from pages 116 and 117 of Ideas and
Integrities by R. Buckminster Fuller. (c) 1963.
The actual passage is taken from something he wrote on Sunday, Nov.
7th, 1942. It is interesting to note how accurate the statements seem to be in
our present time, despite their age. I got a kick out of them in light of the
recent scandals in religious circles and all the other goings on.
The statements come from Chapter Six of the Book. It is entitled
``I Figure'' and these two words are meant to proceed each of the ideas
presented in the chapter. --- Patrick Salsbury, 1-11-90

``...that the people are now more deeply conscious than ever before in
history of the existence and functioning principles of universal, inexorable
physical laws; of the pervading, quietly counseling truth within each and every
one of us; of the power of love; and--each man by himself--of his own
developing, dynamic relationship with his own conception of the
Almightiness of the All-Knowing.

``...that our contemporaries just don't wear their faith on their sleeves
anymore.

``...that people have removed faith from their sleeves because they found
out for themselves that faith is much too important for careless
display. Now they are willing to wait out the days and years for the
truthful events, encouraged individually from within; and the more
frequently the dramatic phrases advertising love, patriotism, fervent
belief, morals, and good fellowship are plagiarized, appropriated and
exhibited in the show windows of the world by the propaganda whips for
indirect and ulterior motives, no matter how meager the compromise--the
more do people withdraw within themselves and shun taking issue with the
nauseating perversions, though eternally exhibiting quiet indifference,
nonchalance or even cultivating seemingly ignorant acceptance.''

How did Bucky's ``Ever Rethinking the Lord's Prayer'' go?

[Well, he came up with a new version each night! But here is one
version posted by Leo Elliott.]

The following is a transcription from a 1976 ``Being With Bucky,'' New
Dimensions Tapes, side 15 (parsing and punctuation
by transcriptionist).

Our God, who art in we even,
even we who know most intimately
of our own weaknesses, failures, faults, and outright sins
our selfishness, fear and cupidity,
of our moments of jealousy, rage and hate
secret cover-ups, lies and self-deceits
God even of we
Our God -- our intuitively-apprehended comprehensive-admonisher
Omni-experienced is your identity,
the everywhere and everywhen evolving omnireality
is your presence
and as the reality differs _uniquely_ from moment to moment
in respect to each individual
so do you speak to each
in exquisitely relevant, instructive terms
regarding that which the individual
can most effectively do
not in behalf of self
but in behalf of all humanity
and Thus in support of the intellectual functioning of humans
thereby in local universe support
of the eternal integrity of omniregenerative universe
which is God.
As omniexperience, you have given us
overwhelming manifest
of your complete knowledge
your complete comprehension
your complete concern
your complete wisdom
your complete responsibility
your complete co-ordination
your complete competence to cope
with any and all problems
and of your utter reliability
always so to do
Yours, dear God, is all the glory.
* * *
We oft-times think of ourselves
as independent individuals
able to get on by ourselves
by our own wits
forgetting altogether
that we did not invent those wits
nor the incredibly complex, 99.9% automated
biological organisms
nor the rest of the universe
with which they interfunction,
all of which is entirely
the prior competent conceptioning
only of God.
Yes dear God, yours _is_ all the Glory.
You are the totally mysterious
eternal integrity, both comprehensively
and incisively governing
the omni-intercomplementation and omni-interaccommodation
of all physical and metaphysical experiences
of ever and everywhere
separately and complexedly intertransforming
omni-regenerative universe.
You are the synergetic integral of all truths.
We have absolute trust and faith in you
and we wish of you
awe-inspiredly, thankfully, rejoicingly and lovingly --
for it's spontaneously feasible
for humans to be wishful of the truth
in awe of the truth
thankful for the truth
to rejoice in the truth
and to love the truth
and to love all the truths combined
for all truths are omni-interaccommodative
as are all the
only mathematically-statable generalized principles
discovered by human minds,
experimentally verified by science
to be externally governing
complex interrelationships of physical universe.
* * *
Truths and principles never contradict one another.
They are all concurrently omni-interaccommodative
and all the truths are metaphysical cognitions
by humans
of special-case realizations
of eternally-valid generalized principles.
It is only through many repeated experiences and recognitions
of the eternal principles
their non-contradicting interaccommodations
that each individual human
progressively and only intuitively discovers the existence of
eternal principles and their special-case manifests
and the truths of everyday events
and all the truths, as our lives discover them,
trend to integrate in synergetic perfection
beyond the special-case experiencing
of inherently terminal
ergo inherently limited
human conceptioning, comprehension and communication...

``It is engineeringly demonstrable that there is no known way to deliver
energy safely from one part of the world to another in larger quantities
and in swifter manner than by high-voltage-conducted `electricity.' For
the first half of the twentieth century the limit-distance of
technically practical deliverability of electricity was 350 miles. As a
consequence of the post-World War II space program's employment and
advancement of the invisible metallurgical, chemical, and electronics
more-with-lessing technology, twenty-five years ago it became
technically feasible and expedient to employ ultra-high-voltage and
superconductivity, which can deliver electrical energy within a radial
range of 1500 miles from the system's dynamo generators.

``To the World Game seminar of 1969 I presented my integrated,
world-around, high-voltage electrical energy network concept. Employing
the new 1500-mile transmission reach, this network made it technically
feasible to span the Bering Straits to integrate the Alaskan U.S.A. and
Canadian networks with Russia's grid, which had recently been extended
eastward into northern Siberia and Kamchatka to harness with
hydroelectric dams the several powerful northwardly flowing rivers of
northeasternmost U.S.S.R. This proposed network would interlink the
daylight half of the world with the nighttime half.

``Electrical-energy integration of the night and day regions of the Earth
will bring all the capacity into use at all times, thus overnight
doubling the generating capacity of humanity because it will integrate
all the most extreme night and day peaks and valleys. From the Bering
Straits, Europe and Africa will be integrated westwardly through the
U.S.S.R., and China, Southeast Asia; India will become network
integrated southwardly through the U.S.S.R. Central and South America
will be integrated southwardly through Canada, the U.S.A., and
Mexico.''

[From The GENI website.]

GENI, Global Energy Network
International Global Energy Network Institute was founded in 1986 by
Peter Meisen to investigate the idea of Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller,
proposing a global electric energy grid as the number one priority to
solve many of the world's most pressing problems.

A Trimtab is a tiny flap that controls the rudder on a ship or airplane.
When the rudder needs to be moved, this tiny ``trimtab'' is adjusted
which creates a low pressure area on one side and turns the rudder.
Bucky used the word to illustrate what the little individual can do to
``turn the great ship of state.'' He also noted that the ship has
[already] passed the point where the turn is occurring. This
might be a comfort to those on the bow wondering if we have missed our
chance to change course.

Not exactly. Though he did speak fondly of socialism (mainly the ``take
care of everyone'' and the ``plan ahead'' ideas in socialism).
The following exchange clarifies this a bit.

Blaine A. D'Amico:
Fuller said nothing about redistribution. His Design Science revolution
is based in raising the living standard of the `have-nots' and
`have-lesses' without taking away from the haves. This is done through
ephemeralization ``more with less.''

Patrick G. Salsbury:
He did, however, discuss DISTRIBUTION, and how the intelligent
application of that could solve problems like global food shortages,
etc.

I am anamored with his writings on education. For someone that had so
much difficulty with standard education models he did quite well. I
first read about his theory on ``Education'' in Operating manual for
Spaceship Earth, chapters 3,4 and 5 I believe. I have read his other
books on education too. All lead to the same conclusion, that education
is active and must be sought, not something that you can sit down and
drink up as someone pours it out to you. We have modeled our
educational theories after this and are now ``organically'' homeschooling
our 5 children. That is what we like most about Bucky.

``Class-two evolutionary trendings are all those events that seem to be
resultant upon human initiative-taking or political reforms that adjust
to the changes wrought by the progressive introduction of environment-
altering artifacts. All the class-two evolutionary events tend to
flatter human ego and persuade humanity to deceive itself by taking credit
for favorable changes in circumstances while blaming other humans or
`acts of God' for unfavorable changes. It therefore assumes that humanity
is running the Universe wherefore, if its power-structure leaders decide
that is is valid to cash in all of nature's available riches to further
enrich the present rich or to protect them militarily from attacks by
their assumed enemies - all at the cost of terminating human presence on
planet Earth - that is the power-structure leader's divine privilege.

``All the class-one evolutionary trending is utterly transcendental to
any human vision, planning, manipulation, and corruption. Class-one
evolution accounts for humans' presence on Earth. It accounts for their
having always been born naked, helpless for months, and inexperienced -
ergo, ignorant, hungry, thirsty, curious, and therefore fated to learn
how to survive only through trial-and-error-won, progressive
accumulation of experience. Class-one evolution accounted for
humanity's all-unexpected invention of verbal (aural, sound)
communication, and thereby the integration of the experience-won
information of the many, whereby the integrated information of the many
increased the capability of humanity at large to cope with the exigencies
of life. It is class-one evolution that led, after the progressive
integration of the total experience-won information, to the unpredicted
invention of writing or visual communication, by means of which the dead
could speak to the living and within which total written information
history human mind from time to time discovered repetitive patterns,
which in turn sometimes led to the discovery of generalized scientific
principles.''

And I'm one of the lucky ones! I've got indoor plumbing and heat! No
way we can supply the world's billions with these assets using the sadly
obsolete construction methods of yesteryear, perpetuated with cosmetic
improvements decade after decade. The USA living standard cannot be
replicated globally, nor should it be, as inappropriate, wasteful and
Dark Aged as it is! May the Chinese do it better!

A story on the radio the other day said metal is becoming more popular
among construction workers in this age of dwindling forests and climbing
lumber prices. For one thing, you can screw instead of nail. Imagine,
pro-metal propaganda on the radio -- in Oregon! The lumber industry is
fighting back, saying mines are at least as damaging to the environment
as logging. But Fuller's point was that the majority of the metals we
need are already mined, and can be recycled over and over (the dwellings
will be designed with recycling in mind, kind of like the Germans have
been doing with some models of BMW).

The old housing stock won't disappear -- decades of remodeling await the
avid remodelers. But I wish those of us who are being pushed to the
periphery by high housing costs had more to look forward to than mobile
home courts. I'm always passing these mobile homes on the backs of
trucks on the freeway -- Caution Wide Load. Why do helicopter
deliveries from the local dealer to less paved over and bulldozed
environs sound so far out and ``futuristic?'' Fuller's little
energy-harvesting, grid-autonomous units, constellated in remote little
campus-communities, would make ideal living and learning environments --
good places for children.

[From Leo Elliott]

``Why do helicopter deliveries... sound so far out and `futuristic'?''

I think the most telling answer is implied in a word contained in
Kirby's next sentence:

the key word being ``grid-autonomous.'' As per `Grunch of Giants,
pushers do not like it when users decide they want to ``grow their
own,'' be it homes, domes, education, or local support systems.
Supposedly the dymaxion bathroom, mentioned here previously, received
rave reviews until the plumbers unions of the time found out that it
would be completely user-installable, thus depriving them of their
``standard fees.''

I would suspect that it has been this whole notion of de-centralized
energy systems (centrifugal energy flow/centripetal info flow) which
has, over the years, aside from Fuller's personal suasions and
disuasions, been the most threatening (to the ``giants'') aspect of his
overall program -- live anywhere you want, do what you want, all paid
for by the dole, which itself will be more than paid for by the return
on investment of those marvelous discoveries and inventions made by the
less-than-1% who would produce the most wonderful synergy-revealing
artifacts.

[From Kirby Urner]
Leo Elliott writes:
> I would suspect that it has been this whole notion of de-centralized energy
> systems... which has... been the most threatening (to the ``giants'') aspect
> of [Fuller's] overall program

Perhaps, perhaps. But think of the business interests in favor too: a
huge aftermarket in user-installables (similar to computer component
add-ons). Cellular phone and fax demands, satellite TV, the education
and info-tainment dialup video needs of remotely deployed
home-schoolers, a growing sector of under/unemployed defense workers
with aerospace savvy... And the utility grids will still have LA,
Paris and Tokyo to power. Its not like a sprinkling of grid-autonomous
dust is going to spell `lights out' in the sprawling megalopolis already
covering the planet. Moreover, Fuller was hardly ``anti-grid'' what with
his bi-hemispheric vision of same...

Recall that ``the industry industry missed'' (July 1932, Fortune magazine)
was initially very appealing to industrialists in the pre-war 30s,
including such as GE -- was briefly subject of what we'd nowadays call
``media hype.'' The unions (along with the banks and county zoning
boards) might have killed it, but the duck was lame to begin with -- or
at least this is what Fuller says in retrospect: ``Fortune made the
mistake of assuming `the industry industry missed' had at last come of
age... Evolution was clearly intent on postponing the inception of the
livingry service industry until humanity had graduated from its
pre-twentieth century condition as a planet of remote nations... all of
which waited upon the completion of a world-around network of ...
telephones ... and jumbo jet airplanes.'' (Grunch of Giants,
pp xvii-iii).

[From Kirby Urner]

Adequate shelter for all humans is possible. Not using forest products
though. I think what tent life and Fuller's homes have in common is
energy-autonomy. With a Fuller unit, I can plunk down in the middle of
nowhere. The tripod of my Fly's Eye is adjustable for bumpy, slopey
terrain. I didn't have to rip a road through the wilderness to get it
here. I didn't have to pour a foundation or bulldoze or whatever. Say
I'm a student of ecology. A university consortium has these ``remote
campus deployment'' units that programs rent for a few weeks or months.
Whole little communities deploy, doing minimal damage to the
environment, make their studies (staying in touch with cellular Internet
etc.), and leave. The noisy helicopter part only comes at the
beginning and the end, and maybe once a week during the middle.

I say we look at cities as huge campuses (the ``city as campus'' metaphor)
and all humans as would-be students in a Global University. Work-study
options, life-long ``learning a living'' scenarios give you access to all
kinds of facilities, travel. Fuller computed that our global energy
budget (solar derived) gave us enough to offer fellowships to all those
impoverished and living in shanty towns, minus any really good
education. I think many families in the Philippines would jump at the
chance to enroll in the Global University. If you like the outdoors
life, and growing food, or fishing, well, that can be arranged.

Nationalism seems a bankrupt strategy for mapping ethnic/cultural
distinctions to geography, which as too few dimensions to accommodate
the interweavings of affinity. For all their drawbacks, notice how
corporations support the trappings of nationhood, with logos, mottos,
CEO-prezes, image/identity stuff, but without blocking off huge areas of
the map. Corporate cultures hang together globally with dispersed
campus settings wired by commlinks and frequent flyers. In this sense,
I think Serbia, Inc. or Israel, Inc. or Palestine, Inc. -- global
networks with no huge territorial claims -- would better accommodate the
complex topology of ``we'' groupings.

Phasing in Fuller's nationless map doesn't mean declaring that nations
don't exist, or waiting for some revolution. We're just de-emphasizing
their importance. And I still think USA has a bright future, not so
much as a territory as a democratic system for providing goods and
services. Governments are systems, inherently global. You can log in
to USA OS (USA operating system) from wherever. Much as it is today --
I send email to mom & dad @usaid.gov in Africa.

To be a Fullerian, philosophically, is, I believe, to say ``enough with
the silly nation-state idea already!'' That doesn't mean I don't pay
taxes, or vote for this or that. But I'm not interested in deciding the
boundaries between Israel and Syria or Serbia and Bosnia. That's a
jigsaw puzzle that's hopeless to the core. Lets get folks into domes
and such, and online. With multimedia and a future to live for, life
will again seem too precious to waste in war to defend the future of
some obsolete institution called ``nation.'' That was the real purpose of
the Spaceship Earth metaphor: not to make earth seem mechanistic (Jeremy
Rifkin's criticism) but to make it seem apolitical.

[From leo elliott]

No argument from me that nationalism presents some definitely grunchy,
special case, anachronistic modes of ownership, which seems to be the
prime directive in these various hideous nationalistic horror theaters
(Rwanda, Bosnia, etc.). I might still have some reservations about
there being a darker side to corporationalism that would lead me to
suspect that, benign as it may sometimes seem, it would hardly make the
world apolitical -- maybe affect the political dialog, but I doubt it
would erase the greed or fear or whatever it is that lies at the core of
the mort-gaging system of accounting which, imo, is squeezing the
forward-lookingness out of more and more arenas. (I am still debating
whether to view Schindler-style commercialism as a testament that, even
in the ultimate debasement of dialog that war represents, that there is
at least some common dialect of commerce that will still be spoken
(representing, presumably, some still-commonly-agreed-upon standards of
value), or whether to view Schindler's efforts as outrageous
exploitation.)